Student/Faculty Accolades
By Ahlaam Abdulwali ’25
This semester, Macalester English Faculty have accumulated a list of accomplishments. This article features the achievements your professors are too humble to mention in class, so make sure to say congratulations the next time you see them!
Professor Rachel Gold was featured in the October edition of Minnesota Women’s Press! Professor Gold, retired Professor Judith Katz, and Mac student Ella Stern (’25) were all interviewed. You can listen to the interview here: https://www.womenspress.com/the-chain-of-history-a-conversation-with-three-jewish-lesbian-activists/
In addition, Professor Gold’s multi-award winning novel Being Emily was released as an audiobook on Sept 17th. You can read more about the audiobook release here: https://rachelgold.com/out-today-the-audiobook-of-being-emily/.
Professor Andrea Kaston Tange won the Donald Gray Prize for her essay “Gestures of Connection: Victorian Technologies of Photography and Visible Mothering.” This prize is awarded to the best journal essay in the field of Victorian Studies by the North American Victorian Studies Association. Professor Kaston Tange’s essay was selected from a pool of all journal articles published in the prior calendar year in the interdisciplinary field of 19th-century British studies. You can read Professor Kaston Tange’s essay on “hidden mother photographs” here. Congratulations Professor Kaston Tange!
Professor Kaston Tange also published an article in The Conversation about Victorian ghost photos. This story was also accompanied by a radio episode. You can read the article here and listen to it on Spotify!
Professor Sarah Ghazal Ali was interviewed about her award-winning poetry collection Theophanies for the Poetry Foundation’s podcast “Vs.” Professor Ali discussed an array of topics including “writing as a spiritual practice, matrilineage, and the generative force of fixed forms.” Listen to the podcast here!
Professor Penelope Geng published an article titled “Against White Cripistemology: Seeing Race and Global Disability in King Lear” in the Shakespearean International Yearbook: Disability Performance and Global Shakespeare (Routledge, 2024). The graduate students of the English department at Johns Hopkins University invited Professor Geng to share her research at the English Literary History (ELH) Colloquium, “a longstanding speaker series.” Profesor Geng will be attending the ELH Colloquium on Nov 7, 2024. If you’re interested in Professor Geng’s research, consider taking ENGL 294-04 The Curse and the Cure: Medicine, Magic, and Literature (Fall 2024) and ENGL 319 “Disability in the English Renaissance” (Spring 2025)!
Professor Michael Prior is currently an Amy Clampitt Residency Fellow. This fellowship includes the opportunity to live in the late poet’s house in Massachusetts, where Professor Prior is working on a new collection of poems. Professor Prior has also been named the Michael Koch guest poetry editor of EPOCH magazine (Cornell University’s literary magazine) for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Congratulations to the incredible professors of the English department! Students and faculty, keep an eye out for next month’s accolades call.